If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Here's a short video Media Stream produced for Saint Francis Hospital highlighting their DaVinci Robotics
surgery service. The video features Larry Hughes who interviews Dr. Cornelius Verhoest a world reknown specialist in robotic surgery.

DISCLAIMER: Surgical imagery depicted. Not for the easily squeamish! // Medical technology is getting weirder everyday -- in a good way. Robotic surgery and computer-assisted medicine are already doing amazing things right now -- just look at the da Vinci Surgical System! Are you ready to ditch the hospital and buy a robot surgeon for the home?

Let's say you have to have a dangerous surgical procedure. Which would you choose? The best human surgeon alive today, or the best robot surgeon from 50 years in the future? Let us know your decision and why in the comments below!

Abstract: Virtual reality based surgical training is an emerging area of research interests. We have developed iDental, a simulator with haptic-visual-audio feedback for dental skill training. The simulator aims to train dental students in their early stage of learning to acquire basic operational skills. Based on our unique haptic rendering methods, iDental achieved some important features, including 6 degree-of-freedom haptic feedback, deformable object simulation, bi-manual coordination, and the simulation of fine manipulation in a narrow oral cavity. In this talk, I will briefly introduce the functions and the features of iDental, discuss challenging problems in haptic rendering, present preliminary user evaluation results and highlight some future research and development topics.

Biography: Yuru Zhang is a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation at Beihang University in Beijing where she served as the associate dean of the school, the associate director of Robotics Institute. Currently she is the associate director of the State Key Laboratory of Virtual Reality Technology and System. Her primary research interest is haptic human-machine interaction including haptic user interface, teletraining and neurohaptics. She has published over 150 technical papers and holds 22 issued patents. She co-authored two books including "Robotic Dexterous Hands" funded by the National Science Foundation of China, and "Haptic Rendering for Simulation of Fine Manipulation" published by Springer. Professor Zhang is a senior member of IEEE and a member of ASME. She is on the Advisory Board for Teaching, the Ministry of Education, China. She was awarded the Outstanding Professional for the 21 Century by the Ministry of Education and the Excellent Investigator Award by the formal Ministry of Aeronautics Industry in China.

Larry Smarr - The Human Microbiome and the Revolution in Digital Health

Published on Mar 14, 2014

The human body is host to 100 trillion microorganisms, ten times the number of cells in the human body and these microbes contain 100 times the number of DNA genes that our human DNA does. The microbial component of our "superorganism" is comprised of hundreds of species with immense biodiversity. Thanks to the National Institutes of Health's Human Microbiome Program researchers have been discovering the states of the human microbiome in health and disease. To put a more personal face on the "patient of the future," I have been collecting massive amounts of data from my own body over the last five years, which reveals detailed examples of the episodic evolution of this coupled immune-microbial system. To decode the details of the microbial ecology requires high resolution genome sequencing feeding Big Data parallel supercomputers. Since modern medicine has not taken into account the nature and changes in the human microbiome, we can look forward to revolutionary changes in medical practice over the next decade.

Larry Smarr is the founding Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a UC San Diego / UC Irvine partnership and the Harry E. Gruber professor in UCSD's Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). Before that he served as founding Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He advises NASA, NIH, DOE, and NSF. His views have been quoted in Science, Nature, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, Wired, Fortune, Business Week, CNN, and the Atlantic. His personal interests include growing orchids, snorkeling coral reefs, and quantifying the state of his body. You can follow him on his life- streaming portal at http://lsmarr.calit2.net.

Vending machines generally offer up sodas, candy bars and chips. Not so for the one created by TED Fellow Gabe Barcia-Colombo. This artist has dreamed up a DNA Vending Machine, which dispenses extracted human DNA, packaged in a vial along with a collectible photo of the person who gave it. It's charming and quirky, but points out larger ethical issues that will arise as access to biotechnology increases.